


Chronicle of Those Who Came Before

by Vinnocent



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pottermorphs AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 06:43:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vinnocent/pseuds/Vinnocent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tie-in with the Pottermorphs AU Tumblr (pottermorphs.tumblr.com). This tells the story of the parents of the main six animagi and the rising of a certain enemy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Toil and Trouble

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: Nope, it starts in early 1981, the last year of the First Wizarding War.

"You're going to have your hands full with this one," Steven Berenson snarled to his partner, roughly shoving a young, dark-skinned, Latina woman into the chair across from Peter Selwyn's desk. 

Selwyn looked up. "What? I wasn't even there."

"Exactly," Steven groaned. "You got to sit here at the desk while I chased this one up and down the entirety of Diagon Alley while she handed out basic model wands to every single creature she encountered."

"I didn't hand a single wand out to any creature," she said as she inspected the ends of her hair for split ends.

"Then what were the goblins doing with them?" he demanded.

She glanced up at him blankly. "Oh! But you said 'creatures'?"

"You see what I've been dealing with for the past hour?!" Steven demanded, gesturing angrily to the woman who was now inspecting her fingernails.

"I'm getting an idea," Peter mumbled, watching the young woman warily.

Steven rubbed the bridge of his. "Get her wand from her. I'm going to go have a… several potions actually."

Peter chuckled. "Alright," he agreed. He held his hand out to the woman. "Are you going to make this easy?"

She handed over a wand. "Oh, I wouldn't want to be any trouble, sir."

Peter smirked. "Really? Because this is a basic model. Same as you're accused of giving to goblins."

"Oops! I'm so sorry!" She handed him a higher grade wand. It looked familiar, but many wand makers used standardized bodies.

"You realize that you handed me evidence?" he asked as he took notes on her wand model before casting a locking curse on it. She only shrugged with a helpless smile. "That accent," he said. "Where are you from?"

" _My_ accent?" she demanded, sitting back again. "What about your accent? Where the hell is that from?"

Peter rolled his eyes. "Scottish," he said.

She leaned forward and batted her eyes. "Really? I've never been to Scottish."

"You're avoiding the question," Peter said, determinedly not smiling at her silly antics.

"What question? I'm so sorry!" she cried enthusiastically. "I've just never been to a English accountant before."

He was not going to laugh. He was really not going to laugh. "You're in the office of Magical Law Enforcement."

"Oh… I'm sorry," she whined, taking on a purposefully absent-minded tone. She looked around the office. "But you can see how I made that mistake?"

Definitely was not going to laugh. "Do you have a name?"

"I sure do!"

"Do feel like sharing?"

She frowned. "I think it might be confusing if we went by the same name."

Peter coughed and put his hand to his mouth in an attempt to keep from laughing. Patiently, she waited for him to recover. "Let's try this again," he finally managed to say. "I'm Peter Selwyn, and you are…?"

She smiled pleasantly. "You can call me Eddy."

He wrote that down. "Your name is Eddy?"

"No, but I like it. Don't you?"

Peter smiled just as pleasantly. "I think you'd be lovely with any name." She grinned victoriously. "But you'd still be a criminal." Her face fell.

"I don't think I've been found guilty of anything yet."

" _Yet_ ," he repeated.

She grinned again.

He sighed and sat back. "If you're not going to cooperate, then I'm going to have to jail you."

She blinked at him innocently. "But I'm up-to-date on my taxes!"

Peter started coughing again, and the woman grinned proudly. Peter put her wand in his pocked and, once recovered, he stood from the desk and grabbed her by the arm. "Come along," he said, lifting her to her feet. Pulling her to his side, he prepared to apparate to the jail cells.

She pulled away. "Really?" she demanded. "How far is it to these cells? All you English wizards are so lazy. That is unless you just wanted to squeeze me."

He glowered at her. "It's a security measure. And I'm not English, I'm Scottish."

"But that's part of England?"

"No, it's-- Agh! Nevermind." He pulled her close again.

"So in a country where every wizard apparates everywhere, your security measure is that you--" They arrived at the cells. "-- can only get there by apparating?"

"The only thing I'm discussing with you is your identity and what you were doing in Diagon Alley," he said, pulling her toward an empty cell as an attendant house elf held it open for him.

"Only that? You must be a very boring dinner date." She allowed herself to be shoved into the cell and turned back to him as he closed the door. "Pretty, though. What are you doing tonight?"

Peter smirked and turned to the page who was handing him a set of forms to sign. "That isn't relevant to you, because you're going to be here."

"Is that so? Well, if you really wanted to ensure that, you'd learn to tell your house elves apart."

"What?!" Peter spun toward her, but it was too late. She and the elf we gone.

The page was alarmed. "Should we put out an alert, sir?"

Peter frowned. "She's just a prankster. It isn't worth it." Wondering how true that actually was, he pulled the wand recited an identification spell.

 _Steven Berenson_ , the glow spelled.


	2. Sticks and Stones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eva gets her wand back and has a discussion with Loren.

Peter rolled over in bed. Downstairs he could hear his grandmother yammering from her portrait. He groaned and mumbled " _Lumos_ …" He blinked at the clock until the numbers became solid. It was two in the morning. What was anyone doing up at two in the--

And that was when he smelled the Floo.

He got to his feet and hurried over to the fireplace just outside his door. It had definitely been used.

"Will you shut up?" a familiar voice hissed. "I'm just trying to get something of mine back. Then I'm leaving."

Peter rolled his eyes and returned to his bedroom, where he pulled a basic model wand out of the robes he'd lain across the foot of the bed. On a second thought, he also took the time to put a shirt on. Then he headed toward the voices downstairs.

"I don't know what that means, but I'm sure it's rude" he could hear her chastising the portrait.

"Little tip?" said Peter, and the woman spun to face him. "If you want to _secretly_ break into people's homes in the night, don't talk back to the portraits."

" _SHE'S A DIRTY THIEF!_ " Aikaterine snapped.

Peter sighed heavily. "Yes, I can see that, grandmother. Please go to sleep. I can take care of this."

"If you're sure," the portrait figure said, eying the woman suspiciously. "You were always such a good boy, Peter." She mumbled some other things as she wandered out of frame, and Peter flinched to hear them.

"Colorful woman," the dirty thief grumbled.

Peter held out the wand to her. "Looking for this?"

She eyed it carefully but did not reach for it. "How did you know?"

"When the second one you handed me turned out to be Steve's, I thought to myself, 'What else might not have been what it seemed?'" he said. "Lo and behold, the 'evidence' locked in my desk where you couldn't snatch it identified Eva Gambaro Laínez. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that doesn't sound like a goblin's name."

"It isn't." She was still eying it. Still not moving toward it. "I'm impressed by the only slight butchering, though. Did you practice?"

He sighed and tossed the wand to her. "Go on, have it."

She caught it easily. "Are you not going to mock me for having a basic wand?" she pouted, inspecting it a moment before putting it away.

"Why would I do that?"

She gestured around her. "You live in a house as big as my neighborhood."

"That's a bit of an--"

"On a property as big as our town."

"Okay, you're just lying now."

Eva smirked, but the expression quickly gave way to suspicion once more. "Why would you give it back?" she asked.

"Because I don't think what you're doing is wrong," he told her. "I just think you're doing it wrongly." He pointed his own wand at her in a reprimanding gesture. "And if you're caught doing it again, you'll be punished to the full extent of the law. Do you understand?"

She raised an eyebrow. "If I'm caught?" she repeated, smirk slowly reappearing.

Peter narrowed his gaze. "That's not what I me--"

"Peter?" he heard his mother's voice call.

"Shit!" he hissed. "You need to go now, or they _will_ press charges."

Eva looked between him and where the voice had come from, chewing on her lip. Then, quickly, she attempted to dart past him to the fireplace.

He grabbed her. "What are you doing?" Peter demanded, glancing back up the stairs to see if his mother was near yet.

"The hearth!"

Remembering the smell of the Floo, Peter jabbed his wand back int the direction of the fireplace. " _Evanesco_!" he cast. Then he turned back to her. "You can't go that way; she'll see you!"

"I suppose you have another?"

"Just apparate!"

"How?"

Peter gawked at her. "I--"

"Peter?" his mother called again.

Hissing with annoyance, he grabbed her and pulled her close, apparating them into the back property, near his father's hunting blind. "I am fairly certain that I'm aiding you now," he groaned.

She looked at him curiously, amusement playing at her lips. "I think you were aiding me when you gave me my wand back."

But Peter wasn't paying attention. He'd come to realize that his feet were soaking into mud and his clothes were quickly dampening against his skin. "Raining," he grumbled, glancing up at the sky through the branches. "Of course, it's raining."

Eva laughed. "You don't like the rain?"

"No one likes rain!"

Her smile only grew. He was quite sure he was being mocked. "How can you dislike something so common? What a miserable life you must lead!"

"Made all the more miserable by my attempts to help the most incompetent thief and anarchist I have ever met! How do you not know how to apparate?"

Eva ignored his question, instead stepping even closer and inspecting him like she thought she was going to find answers hidden in the pores of his skin. "What _is_ your interest in what I do?" she wondered.

"Why didn't you bring an elf for this escape?" he countered.

"You want to kiss me," she said. She said it simply, as though already certain in the factuality of it. He opened his mouth to protest but came to realize that he had no protest.

She put her arms around his neck in yet another silly, exaggerated gesture of flirtation, and he immediately realized that she was up to something again. "Go home, Eva Gambaro Laínez."

She smirked and let her hands trail down his chest as she pulled away. "As you wish," she said. He could hear her laughing as she ran away into the forest.

He shook his head and leaned back against a tree. What was he doing? He had helped her escape from a fairly serious charge. He'd then given her her wand back after she'd broken into his home and then helped her escape discovery. And _then_ , of all things, allowed her to recognize his attraction to her. His father would have him on the streets for such a thing, if not worse. And yet, he found himself absently wondering which circumstance was most likely to result in another meeting.

This was bad. This was very bad.

Peter pulled himself away from the tree and apparated back to his room, he hurried over and shut the door as quietly as possible. Only when he pulled off his soggy shirt did he feel something pull at his neck and then a small weight fall against his chest. He went to the mirror on the washstand. There, hanging from a chain almost as thin as hair, was a small tube with a few herbs in it.

He tapped it with his wand. " _Identificare_." Of course, the words were reversed in the mirror, but he could read them well enough.

_For wealth of love and safety in travel_  
For hidden truth and transformation  
For conspiracies of good will 

\-- --

Eva tapped on the old barn door with her wand. "Hidden truth and transformation," she said, then opened the door to reveal the secondary space that Walter Sosanya had been so kind as to provide.

Loren Teague practically tackled her. "Oh my god, where have you been all day?! We were worried!"

"Some stuff happened after my business in the Alley," Eva admitted.

"You're shivering! Eva, you're soaking wet!" Loren immediately stepped back and started using a hot-air charm on her friend.

Eva did her best to hold back giggles that she knew would only irritate her distressed friend at that moment. "Sorry," she said. "I got stuck on some rich guy's property and had to make a broom."

Loren glowered. "How do you not know how to apparate?"

"It's never been necessary before!" Eva whined.

"Sometimes you will find that impracticality can indeed be practical," Loren fussed, and somewhere in the back Eva heard scuffling. They'd probably woken up one of the centaurs. That, or Elfangor was up to another full night of experimentation. Despite Loren's claims, Eva was certain that her friend was the only one who didn't take it for granted that she could survive any self-made trouble. "Which rich guy's property?"

Eva pushed Loren's wand aside and walked over to a haystack where she collapsed wearily. She didn't know how long these four had been working together, but they had made zero human adaptions until she'd arrived. These adaptions, so far, had been creating a small hearth and throwing a blanket over a haystack with some cushioning charms. "Peter Selwyn," she mumbled, picking straw off the blanket so she wouldn't have to face Loren.

"Eva, they're Death Eaters!"

"Then why did he hide the evidence against me?" she asked quietly, chewing on her lip.

"What evidence?" asked Loren.

"I may have been giving wands out to goblins in Diagon Alley. Just a few! Well, maybe twenty. Some cop called 'Steve' caught me. He unloaded me on Selwyn. Selwyn thought I was funny, but he tried to put me in jail. Lakely helped get me out, right in front of him."

"They can track house elves, Eva!" she protested. "Well, aurors can anyway. But I'm sure they're going to call an auror in on a jailbreak!"

"That's what I thought, too! I hung out with her all day so I could protect her! But nothing happened! He didn't report it." Eva said. "So, eventually, I send Lakely off to the Goblin Corps, and I find myself a floo to Selwyn's, because I've got to get my wand back, and if he didn't report me maybe he had it?"

"Oh my god, I can't believe you--" Loren cut herself off, realizing the gap in Eva's story. "You walked into a Death Eater's house without your wand and no knowledge of apparation?"

Eva shrugged. "I thought something was up," she said. "But Loren, listen. He caught me."

Loren's hands flew to her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. "Holy shit!"

"No, _listen_! He caught me and gave me back my wand. And then helped me out of the house when we were almost caught. He told me he didn't think I was doing anything wrong."

"The hell he did! Give me that wand!" Loren held out her hand, and, smirking, Eva handed over her wand. She leaned back and relaxed while Loren started smashing spells into it the only way she knew how. She'd only meant to rest her eyes, but it would seem, given the fact that she awoke a short while later, that she had fallen asleep. Loren was sitting next to her, arms crossed stubbornly. "Well?" Eva asked.

"Al's double-checking it," she grumbled.

"You didn't find anything did you?"

Loren scowled. "I don't like this, Eva."

"You don't like anything I do."

"No, I don't!" Loren protested. "Eva, there's a war on, and you're giving wands to goblins!"

"So?"

"So people are _dying_!"

"And they're going to keep dying unless you address the _source_ of the problem! You said that these 'dark lords' and wars and uprisings keep rising every so often. Why the hell do you think that is?"

"Because we don't give goblins wands?" Loren asked incredulously.

"Because you insist on shitting where you eat!"

Loren rolled her eyes. "I'm not saying I'm against Creature Rights--"

"Don't call it that," Eva groaned.

"I'm just saying you need priorities! Goblins not having wands isn't comparable to muggle and wizard abduction, torture, and murder."

"I'm not saying it is, but what abduction am I neglecting? Where else was I needed today?"

"Maybe not today," Loren insisted. "But if you had been arrested?"

"I _was_ arrested," Eva reminded her. "It didn't take."

"It you had been arrested properly by a competent investigator and found guilty in court -- which you would have been -- you could have been away for _years_."

"If the risk isn't worth it, then why are we even fighting?"

"Because _we_ are saving _people_ , Eva!"

Eva scowled and crossed her arms. "I guess we just have different definitions of what constitutes 'people.'" She glanced toward the wall that separated the main room from the laboratory space, where she could hear hooves scratching at a stone floor. "Though one would think they could expect otherwise."

Loren's eyes narrowed. "Don't you bloody well dare. You _know_ where I stand. And if your fruitless pranks are worth such low remark, then have them and leave us out of it." Loren stormed off, toward the back. "Get some sleep," she called back. "You look tired!"

Eva scowled, pulled her cushioned blanket around her, and did just that.


End file.
